Judgments revisited: Falconer

Abstract

The hearings of Falconer ventilated the legal arguments about the nature of automatism without mention of its dubious nature. They illustrate the rarefied atmosphere that juristic precedent can enter, when the participants in the adversarial contest fail to inform the court of real world realities.

Keywords:

• automatism
• burden of proof
• dissociative amnesia
• post-traumatic amnesia
• psychological trauma